From the left: Hillary’s Debate Prep

There are two possible Donald Trumps that could show up to Monday night’s debate, writes David Axelrod in The New York Times. If Trump the “showman” shows up, Axelrod says, Hillary Clinton should react this way: “Instead of engaging Mr. Trump frontally in an ugly contest of insults, the best course for Mrs. Clinton may be to navigate around him. Even as she strikes contrasts, she should take her case directly to the camera and the American people, referring to Mr. Trump without engaging him.” But what if a kinder, gentler Trump shows up? “She cannot allow her opponent to use the campaign’s largest audience to rehabilitate himself with voters who doubt his fitness for the office. She must hold him accountable for his most provocative comments and his utter lack of substance.”

From the right: Trump’s Big Test

How should Trump approach Clinton in the debate Monday night? The Wall Street Journal’s Kimberley Strassel says Trump must embrace his status as the agent of change: “Everyone already knows Mr. Trump is a scrapper. What he needs to show now is that he has his own optimistic and considered plans for change in America.” In a recent poll, “48% of voters felt Mr. Trump could bring about ‘real change.’ Only 36% said that of Mrs. Clinton.” By being optimistic and positive, she says, Trump would keep the focus on Clinton’s major weakness: “Mrs. Clinton these days looks perpetually angry and seems to have only one volume setting: yell. The press keeps noting that she is a seasoned debater, but then again she has mostly debated fellow Democrats and been questioned by sympathetic press.”

Foreign-affairs expert: Bibi Succeeds Where Bam Fails

The UN General Assembly this week, notes Walter Russell Mead at The American Interest, showed how successful Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s diplomacy has been, in stark contrast to President Obama’s failures. “Bibi’s reset with Russia, unlike Obama’s, actually worked. His pivot to Asia has been more successful than Obama’s. He has had far more success building bridges to Sunni Muslims than President Obama, and both Russia and Iran take Bibi and his red lines much more seriously than they take Obama’s expostulations and pious hopes.” Mead says one reason Bibi has been more successful than Obama is that “Bibi understands how the world works better than Obama does.”

Hispanic think-tanker: No National Latino Museum

Seeking to capitalize off the attention garnered by this past weekend’s opening of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, prominent Hispanics are suggesting it’s time for a Latino version of the same. But this is a mistake, says Heritage Foundation senior fellow Mike Gonzalez, writing in The Washington Post. “Of all the reasons this is a bad idea, we can start with the fact that the experiences of African Americans cannot be compared to those of any other group — especially immigrants and their descendants.” Another reason to oppose it is that it would cement the idea of Hispanics as permanent victims rather than equal Americans: “Defenders of immigration make the case that today’s immigrants will assimilate as members of previous surges did — which is what undoubtedly will happen, but only if they are treated as those earlier arrivals were. That is, as immigrants on their way to being Americans, not as members of a permanent national minority.”

Campaign scribes: Dems Look to 2020

While the public is focused on the upcoming national election, reporters at the Huffington Post say Democrats are poised to win at the local level. Ryan Grim, Paul Blumenthal and Michael McAuliff say such victories would plant the seeds for congressional gains: “State-level races are also gaining importance with the approach of 2020, when elections will determine who draws future district lines based on the next census. In 2010, the tea party wave delivered most of the country’s state legislatures to Republicans, who used the wins to gerrymander state-level and congressional districts. Those districts mean it’s much more difficult for Democrats to take back the U.S. House.”